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Piano Sonata in B minor, Op 40 No 2

Introduction

The Sonata in B minor shows Clementi again at his best when writing in a minor key. Still experimenting restlessly with large-scale formal plans, he once more arrives at a solution that is for him entirely new: there are two big movements in the tonic (both sonata-allegro types), each preceded with a slow introduction. The Largo mesto e patetico introduction to the final movement produces a subsidiary theme that is adopted as the first material of the Allegro that follows, and the Largo itself appears (as in the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata) at the point of recapitulation. The first movement starts with an introduction of high pathos and stabbing dissonance; even its middle section in the relative major (D major) suggests not relief, but something like melancholy resignation. The Allegro con fuoco e con espressione that follows is one of Clementi’s fine driving, appassionato movements in a minor key, akin to the memorable first movement of his Sonata in G minor, Op 34 No 2.

Recordings

'Fervent, expressive … big-boned performances' (BBC Music Magazine)'Demidenko brings enormous gravitas and spirituality. The fire and dash he lavishes on the quicker movements make this highly enjoyable disc no less e ...» More

Howard Shelley’s series of Clementi’s Piano Sonatas has received the highest critical acclaim and reawoken interest in this important body of piano music. This sixth and final volume contains some of the most complex, virtuosic and large-scale wor ...» More

Details

The three turn-of-the-century Op 40 Sonatas were issued in 1802 in London (entered Stationers’ Hall, 11 September), Paris (October) and Vienna (November). As Harold Truscott has shown (to the point of comparative illustration) the Allegro con fuoco of the B minor, No 2, and the Adagio molto of the D major, No 3, have much in common with the first two movements of Beethoven’s D major Sonata, Op 10 No 3 (published four years earlier). Coincidence? Plagiarism? Who now was influencing whom? Or was it simply that both composers were men of their time, speaking the same lingua musica? We cannot be sure. The links though are certainly uncanny. Not quite a sonata quasi una fantasia, but with plenty of fantasy in its bones, the B minor is an extraordinary affair. Prefaced by a slow introduction—a tempestuous mix of Classical rigour, Hungarian fire and a moment of bass shift that might almost be out of Beethoven’s yet-to-be-printed Op 31 No 2 (fourteen bars before the end of the exposition)—the first movement is large-scaled, with the exposition (repeated) closing in the dominant minor (cf Op 25 No 5), followed by a lengthy development that contrasts exposed, icy two-part legato canonic writing (very Clementian, cf the minore of the companion D major Sonata’s finale) with brilliant staccato attack, crisp thirds/sixths and bravura broken octaves. The second movement, combining the functions of alternating adagio and finale, is a curious structure: A1 (Largo)—B1 (Allegro)—A2 (Molto adagio)—B2 (Presto). A1 is a sonata design, with the start of the development section alluding back cyclically to the pair of right-hand diminished sevenths a fourth apart which round off the slow introduction of the first movement. The recapitulation omits the first subject which is brought back instead in A2, a ferocious, speeded-up coda of virtuoso figuration and punched-out cadence. The bleak, sparse, recitative-like slow sections variously remember C P E Bach and beckon late Beethoven.